every day by the sun to the Earth, there is no energy problem. To get a sense of the relative scales involved, consider the following: the total amount of energy delivered by the sun to the Earth is approximately a million trillion (1018) kilowatt-hours a year, compared with our “measly” needs (on this scale) of 150 trillion (1.5 × 1014) kilowatt-hours we collectively use each year. So on the scale of what the Earth receives from the sun, our energy use represents only about 0.015 percent of what is in principle actually available to us. To put it another way: more energy is delivered by the
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